Colonel Magistrate Freddy Mukendi is an imposing man who speaks from behind darkly shaded eyeglasses. Wearing a black cotton button-down shirt and matching pants, he takes up the full space of a lounge chair, giving off a breezy, if formal, comfort in his own skin. Considering his high-level position in the Democratic Republic of Congo, this may not be entirely unexpected.

When Congolese President Joseph Kabila tapped 49-year-old Jeanine Mabunda Lioko, a finance executive and a member of the National Assembly of the Democratic Republic of Congo, to be his special representative on sexualized violence in July 2014, UN representatives hailed the appointment as a “new dawn” in the fight to end rape and child recruitment in the country’s 20-year conflict.

Twenty-five years of breathing in dust has led Mireille Mbale to drink milk when she can afford it; it is what she believes will guard her against lung disease. She makes less than $5 a day. Years of the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo’s brash sun have dried her exposed skin. Her shirts have rips from wear and her legs are powdered gray with dried mud. She wears flip-flops.

The horrors are so terrible that they sound made up but—somehow—they aren’t.

A woman raped in front of her husband. In front of her parents-in-law. Forced to watch her child killed and then raped. Forced to have sex with her son in front of militants. Raped when nine months’ pregnant.

Just as rape and other forms of sexualized violence have historically been viewed as a “natural” part of war, they have often been recognized as occurring in genocide but not necessarily as an act of genocide in itself.

In August 2010, reports began trickling out of Democratic Republic of Congo about another tragic episode of mass sexualized violence perpetrated by rebel troops over four days in the eastern town of Luvungi. The International Medical Corps, or IMC, an American aid group, was first on the scene to provide help and assessment. Their data informed reports by UN Peacekeeping that indicated that there were 37 victims; months later, an official UN document stated that 387 civilians had been raped.